With Offbeat Features, Hyperlocals Can Spark Better Engagement

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Maybe hyperlocal news sites should take a look at the old Life magazine formula, and see how they could adapt it to their news mix. I’m not saying that local sites should start running pinups. But a steady diet of stories about school budget hearings and local festivals aren’t enough. Why not spice up the homepage with more local feature content — especially stories that have strong visuals…

A Site to Suss Out What a Local Neighborhood Is Actually Like

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CEO Ann Montgomery created Nabewise to be an online repository for specific information about neighborhoods in cities around the country — uncovering the type of stuff a local would know, but which someone visiting for the day (perhaps to see if they wanted to move there) would never uncover…

Street Fight Daily: Urbanspoon Launches ‘Guides,’ Groupon Defends

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Urbanspoon Launches Dining Recommendations from Both Users and Celebrity Chefs (Pando Daily)… Groupon Fires Back at Shuttered Waffle Business (ABC News)… Post Paywall, Greenville’s Media Scene Shifts (NetNewsCheck)…

With Patch Revenue Up 100% in Q2, Armstrong Hints at ‘Second Phase’

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The hyperlocal network’s traffic is growing at “double-digit rates,” according to AOL’s second quarter earnings report. Patch is also gearing up for what AOL CEO Tim Armstrong calls, “phase two” of its product roadmap, which will focus on adding the ability for “high-level community involvement in a very precise way on the Patch platform.”

Uber’s Ice Cream Stunt and the Future of Get-It-Now Local Commerce

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With instant delivery, the local advertising market comes alive all of a sudden. Because now huge chunks of commerce where Amazon has stomped out mom-and-pops now becomes viable again because, at least for now — Amazon can’t get it to you same day, if you ab-fab-gotta-have-it-now-now-now. This trickles down into new reasons for mom-and-pops to, you guessed it, advertise online…

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Monetization, Square Valuation

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Foursquare Rolls Out Its First Big Money-Making Feature: ‘Promoted Updates’ (TechCrunch)… Square Expects New Financing and a Loftier Value (NYT)… Craigslist Sues Apartment Search Site PadMapper Over Listings (GigaOm)…

Street Fight Announces Second Annual Two-Day Summit in New York

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The brightest minds in hyperlocal will gather again in New York for Street Fight Summit 2012, Street Fight’s flagship event, on October 30th and 31st at 82Mercer in SoHo. The topic: The Next Generation in Hyperlocal. Over the course of two days, speakers from startups, media and technology will discuss key ideas and issues driving the ideas and strategies that will create lasting business models in hyperlocal.

6 Location-Based Marketing Strategies for Small Business Owners

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Roughly half of all smartphone users are now finding offers and discounts based on their current locations, according to a 2012 report, but only 9% of small businesses are taking advantage of popular location-based networks like Foursquare to promote their brands. Here are six tips from leaders in the location-based marketing field…

New Pontiflex Tool Uses Social Content to Generate Email Follow-Ups for SMBs

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Mobile advertising company Pontiflex has launched a new Social FollowUp tool aimed at helping small businesses engage with new leads generated through its AdLeads platform. Social FollowUp pings newly acquired consumers with an auto-generated email that pulls recent content from a business’ existing social media accounts…

Street Fight Daily: NextDoor Raises $18.6M, YP Freshens Site

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.NextDoor, the Social Network for Neighborhoods, Raises $18.6M (GigaOm)… YP.com Freshens Up Homepage, Creates Higher Expectations for the Inside (Screenwerk)… Reinventing the Billboard (Inc.)…

Does the ‘Arms Race’ Over Mapping Tech Benefit the Local Consumer?

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As the consumer’s relationship with local information has shifted from search to discovery, so has their relationship with maps. The question for Google and Apple is whether 3D mapping is an innovation built to sustain, or disrupt, the search-based local web that Google envisioned when it launched Maps in 2005…

Alabama Deals Site Puts Focus on Merchants to Compete With Groupon

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Deal Co-op CEO Nate Schmidt says that when Birmingham, Ala.,-based TheSuperDeal is pitching deals to local merchants, sales reps are usually not just making cold sales calls. Rather, because of the team’s longstanding local ties to the city, it’s often a pitch to a business that someone that their team knows in some way, he says: “We’ve been in the community. There’s no doubt that’s been really important.”

Street Fight Daily: TaskRabbit Scores $13M, Tribune Keeps Journatic

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.TaskRabbit Takes Another $13M, With Founders Fund Leading the Round (All Things D)… Media Companies have Trouble Finding the Sweet Spot in Hyperlocal Journalism (Chicago Tribune)… The Hard Truths of Hyperlocal Journalism Reveal Themselves in Journatic Trouble (Poynter)…

As Deals Look Forward, a ‘Red Herring’ Threatens Growth

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For LivingSocial, a strong editorial voice in selecting and presenting “experiences” – whether online or offline — makes its brand harder to replicate. Voice, whether that’s conveyed through the kind of deals offered or through the content that surrounds it, is hugely important to creating value that’s resistant to the degenerative pull of commoditization…

PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Foursquare, Loc-Aid

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In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan discuss Coke’s campaign with Foursquare to save your parks; finally an app for chocolate lovers to get excited about; plus stories about VISA, Liveshare, Microsoft, our resource of the week and special guest Caroline Hodge CMO of Loc-Aid…

Street Fight Daily: Highlight Takes Two, Digital First Announces Curation Team

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Highlight 1.2 Solves Some of the App’s Problems, but Big Questions Remain (The Verge)… Digital First Announces Curation Team (10,000 Words)… Twitter Offers Location Targeted Advertisements (CNET)…

Billions in Local Ad Dollars Surge to Online — But Just a Trickle to News

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We hear a lot about the surging growth of local online ad revenue, and, to be sure, the numbers are growing fast — to $16.4 billion in 2011 (up 18% annually) and $19.90 billion projected for 2012 (up 22.2%), according to Borrell Associated. But very little of that revenue is flowing to “pure-play” news hyperlocals…

Street Fight Daily: Ebay Sees Mobile Surge, Bing Adds Foursquare

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.EBay’s John Donahoe Seeing a “Staggering Surge” in Mobile Shopping (All Things D)… LocalResponse Teams Up With ShopLocal For In-Store Mobile Ads (TechCrunch)…

Foursquare Adds ‘Updates’ Function for Local Merchants

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The location-based app has rolled out a new tool this afternoon called Local Updates, which allows businesses to publish content (for free) to nearby users who have checked-in in the past. The updates will appear within users’ friends tabs, as well as in businesses’ listings under the explore tab…

Advice for Mayer: Make Yahoo the Local King of the ‘Internet of Things’

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Local and mobile are two areas where Yahoo could shore up its business and, over time, dramatically improve its results. And if it plays the game well, it might be able to shift from a portal to a more dynamic provider of useful things for a hungry, mobile, social Web populace…